A formative and strange digital world I spent a lot of time in as a kid. The way that swathes of areas change from one to another, the music, the mystery of higher levels, the limited information in online databases, the mystique of the ever-futuristic "korean versions" that had new content, the weird little rituals of fame and trading and interacting. The sense of depth as you progress towards the Zakum mines, or into the Ant Tunnel. The poor writing and at times broken localization lent itself to a lot of hypothesizing and memorability, the extreme amount of luck required to get stronger equipment bordered on hilarious.

As a game itself... well, I think this game is honest in the sense that there's a ton of grinding, and it sucks ass to do! There's a lot of bizarre and messy decisions, but it adds up (or at least did, for me as a kid) to an overall interesting experience.

Playing as an adult, the magic, of course, is gone, but it's still a game I think about and draw on from time to time.

Rating is relevant to the years I played from 2008 when 4th job was added up to Big Bang sometime in 2010, not as the game stands now. Review touches on that disparity, but rating is strictly temporally bound. It was a great 2 years, filled with fun times with both in-person and friends in both the grind and the party quests. Wound up falling out of it by the time I hit crusader. Tried returning since then a few times over the years but each time I realize it's just a completely different game, which is to be expected (didn't even get to keep my old guy and all my old mapleversary gear). That's not to fault it too much given how long its been around and what must conceivably be done to keep such a long standing MMO interesting, but each time I the same glaring mis-step until I finally nailed the coffin. The game seems to have fallen prey to a classic flaw that's been an Achilles heel in nearly every Korean MMO I've played; Content pacing. it started out PERFECTLY paced to demand enough commitment to facilitate its social elements and did so expertly, incorporating mild grinding with party quests at just the right levels to keep things interesting (at least up to lvl 70 where I had stopped). The last time I tried returning however, it was a blast-through rush to high levels to prepare for an end-game grind that becomes the game itself, bereft of the variety of party quests and necessity to seek out training grounds, resulting in an abundance of useless maps and a repetitive number slog. More focus seemed to be given to the idea of having multiple fully leveled characters, something monumentally arduous in its early iteration, in lieu of unique content. Maplestory 2 suffered the same fate not to long following an amazing launch in KMS2 (Which was perfectly paced for its first few months), and then pretty much immediately upon its release to the west as GMS2 you were expected to hit level cap in a day or two. Maybe some don't consider this a flaw, maybe I've just gotten older and less involved. Either way, Both Maplestory and I have moved on.

I'll never forget the fond memories. It was truly lightning in a bottle, though it seems the cork came undone long ago.

I have spent many, many hours in this game and have spent a lot of my money on it. This is probably the game that consumed the majority of my time between 2005 and 2015. I have a ton of memories made in it that I get incredibly nostalgic for. The soundtrack slaps harder than a brick to my face, but there is no denying that Nexon absolutely destroyed everything great about this game.

The cracks began to form in 2012 after the Big Bang update completely overhauled the game. The maps changed, entire class structures changed, monster levels were randomly boosted or nerfed, a lot of content was removed, and it began to really chip away at what I thought was the pure joy this game gave. It slowly started shifting towards becoming a pay to win model, where people willing to spend billions of mesos always fared way better than people who couldn't, ruining the casual playerbase.

Anyone not able to play often were suddenly left behind by their now overleveled friends and guildmates. Party quests and traveling shut down and the social aspect died with them. Grinding for forever to get to max level and having the best equipment became normal gameplay.

I have tried several times to randomly get back into this game, but it's just a husk of what it once was. You barely run into anyone anymore and the only thing to do in it is to just grind levels out forever. Nexon is still an awful company, so I am done trying to get back into this game even as a meme. Very disheartening, but the soundtrack at least lives on.

No lifed this pice of art for like 4 years and after that it went down the drain when they destroyed market with mass drops of items and easing everything to oblivion. Transformation of MS shows what is wrong about modern MMOs. Nothing is worth anything because you can get everything easily and do not have to think about anything. Also they added mass popups on screen and it looks like mobile game, thought it is nothing like mobile game. Oh also PTW. So when I played it it was 5 stars, now it is like 2 stars.
When it was good it was one of the best games I ever played, mainly because everything had value. Items and things you do were worth your time and you could look into past how every step of the way you were progressing. There was real grind but at least it showed you achieved something or sacrificed you life for furthering you MS character.